zondag 23 januari 2011

With Western media having announced that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will shortly issue indictments against Hezbollah, Russian magazine Odnako challenges the entire UN investigation. Thierry Meyssan posits that the weapon used to assassinate former Prime Minister Rafik Hairiri was supplied by Germany. Former German prosecutor and first commissioner in charge of the UN probe, Detlev Mehlis, seemingly doctored evidence to cover up his country’s involvement. These revelations embarrass the Tribunal and reverse the tide in Lebanon.

All the conflicts rocking the Middle East today crystallize around the Tribunal. For some, the Tribunal should bring about the dissolution of the Hezbollah, quell the Resistance and establish a Pax Americana. Others consider that the Tribunal is flouting the law and subverting the truth to ensure the takeover of a new colonial order in the region. The Tribunal was created on 30 May 2007, pursuant to UNSC resolution 1757, to prosecute the alleged sponsors of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination. In the political context at that time, this implied bringing to trial serving Presidents Bashar el-Assad of Syria and Emile Lahoud of Lebanon, not exactly favourites of the neo-conservatives. However, the charges were not pursued since they were based on flimsy evidence planted by false witnesses. With no accused left, the Tribunal could easily have disappeared in the meanders of bureaucracy were it not for a turn of events that catapulted it back into the epicentre of the turbulent Middle East political scene.

On 23 May 2009, journalist Erick Follath disclosed on Der Spiegel Online that the prosecutor was poised to indict Hezbollah military leaders. For the past 18 months, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, has been proclaiming his party’s innocence, maintaining that the real aim was to decapitate the Resistance and clear the region for the Israeli army. The indictment against Shia leaders for the assassination of a Sunni leader is of such a nature as to spark off a fitna, a Muslim civil war. During his recent visit to Moscow, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of the deceased, reiterated that the political exploitation of the Tribunal exposes his country to the risk of a new conflagration. President Medvedev retorted that Russia wants Justice to be served and reproves any attempt to discredit, weaken or delay the Tribunal’s proceedings. A position of principle which risks being severely eroded by Odnako’s revelations. Our own investigation unearthed data that open a completely new avenue. We met with a many actors, so that the news of our work spread quickly and alarmed those for whom the assassination trail implicating the armed Lebanese Resistance represents a real godsend. In an effort to intimidate us, the Jerusalem Post on 18 October launched an attack, accusing the author of this article of having received $1 million from Iran to exonerate Hezbollah.

Rafik Hariri’s convoy was attacked in Beirut on 14 February 2005. Twenty-three people were killed and one hundred injured. With a preliminary UNSC report indicating unprofessional conduct of the Lebanese authorities, the UNSC set up its own investigation. From the outset, it attributed the attack to a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives. Established to compensate for the Lebanese lack of professionalism, one would have expected the UN mission to scrupulously observe classical criminal procedures. Not so! The crime scene was hardly examined, the victims not exhumed and no autopsies performed. It took long before an attempt was made to ascertain the modus operandi. Having discarded a bomb dug in the ground, the investigators adopted the theory of van without bothering to verify it. Hariri2 However, this version is implausible given the size and depth of the crater that a surface explosion could not have caused.

Faced with the Swiss experts’ refusal to endorse the official version, on 19 October the Tribunal recreated the crime scene behind closed doors in France - one of the countries funding the Tribunal - instead of in Lebanon or the Netherlands, seat of the Tribunal. The buildings surrounding the crime scene were reconstructed and earth brought in from Beirut. The convoy was reconstituted, including the armoured vehicle, to demonstrate that the height of the concrete buildings had confined the explosion, enabling the blast to produce the crater. The results of this costly experiment have never been divulged. Photos and videos taken immediately after the attack show the enormous blaze, with burning debris all around and bodies of the victims charred on one side while intact on the other. An astonishing phenomenon which bears no resemblance to what is normally caused by conventional explosives. The theory that the van was transporting a mix of RDX, PETN and TNT does not account for the damages occurred. What is more, from the photos showing Rafik Hariri’s corpse one can observe that his solid gold wristwatch has melted, whereas the collar of his luxury shirt still hugs his neck in pristine condition.

So, what really happened? The explosion generated a blast of an exceptionally intense heat and exceptionally brief duration. Thus, the flesh exposed to the blast was instantly carbonized, while the body underneath was not burnt. High-density objects (such as the gold watch) absorbed the heat and were destroyed, but low-density objects (like the delicate fabric of Hariri’s collar) had insufficient time to absorb the heat and hence were unaffected. Rafik Hariri’s remains. Moreover, the videos show that a number of limbs were severed by the explosion. Oddly, the cuts are clean, as if made on clay statues. There is no sign of shattered or jutting bones, nor of any torn flesh. The reason is that the explosion sucked up all the oxygen and dehydrated the bodies, rendering them friable. In the hours that followed, several on-the-spot witnesses complained of breathing ailments. Wrongfully, the authorities interpreted them as a psychosomatic reaction following their psychological trauma.

In any criminal inquiry, such observations should have been the starting point, yet they do not figure in any of the reports submitted by the "professional experts" to the UNSC. When we asked military experts what explosives could generate such damage, they mentioned a new type of weapon: a combination of nuclear and nanotechnology science can trigger an explosion the exact strength of which can be regulated and controlled. The weapon is set up to destroy everything within a given perimeter, down to the nearest centimetre. This weapon exerts a very strong pressure on the area of the explosion. The minute it stops, the heaviest objects are propelled upwards. Accordingly, cars were sent flying through the air. It is equipped with a nano-quantity of enriched uranium, emanating radiations which are quantifiable. Interestingly, one of the passengers in Rafik Hariri’s car survived: former Minister Bassel Fleyhan. When taken to a top-notch French military hospital for treatment, the doctors discovered that he had been in contact with enriched uranium. But no one linked this to the attack.

The weapon, which is shaped like a small missile, a few tens of centimetres long, is fired from a drone. Actually, several witnesses assured they had heard an aircraft flying over the scene of the crime. The investigators asked the US and Israel, whose ﻿﻿

Hezbollah intercepted and released videos from Israeli drones surveying

Rafik Hariri’s movements and the scene of the crime

﻿﻿surveillance satellites are permanently switched on, to provide them with images. On the day of the attack, the US had AWACS over Lebanon. Live feeds could show a drone and even determine its flight path. But Washington and Tel Aviv - which indefatigably urge all parties to cooperate with the Tribunal - turned the request down.

At a press conference on 10 August 2010, Hassan Nasrallah showed a video allegedly shot by Israeli military drones and intercepted by his organisation. All of Rafik Hariri’s movements had been registered for months, until the final day when all the surveillance converged on the bend in the road where the attack was staged. Thus, Tel-Aviv had been surveying the area prior to the assassination. Which is not to say, as Mr Nasrallah claims, that they were the authors of the crime.

French journalist Thierry Meyssan is a political analyst, founder and chairman of the Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace conference. He publishes columns dealing with international relations in newspapers and magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. Last books published in English: “9/11 the Big Lie” and “Pentagate.”

Not a newsblog, Geopolitiek in perspectief, which was launched 15 March 2010, provides background, analysis and comment on world affairs. Some articles are based on less well known but proven historic facts and are therefore of permanent value. These posts are provided with the label "documentaire". Egbert Talens’ documentary contributions were additionally allocated an own label.

Comments of maximum 100 words are welcome if posted with authentic personal details. The webmaster moderates and reserves the right to reject posts at this discretion. Reactions with added value will be published.

Non-Dutch readers

The mission statement mentioned under the blog title reads:

"In an age of media concentration, embedded journalism and political spin, Geopolitiek in perspectiefprovides concise texts designed to paint an independent picture of the changing balance of power in the world and the areas where the struggle for power occurs. The blog, which is open to contributions from guest authors, is particularly focused on the Middle East conflicts and the Israel-US special relationship."

“La guerra contra la democracia” (“The War on Democracy”) is a documentary film made by the Australian reporter John Pilger. The documentary focuses on the intrusion of the United States into political affairs in Latin America, mainly in Venezuela. It shows, through the presentation of documents and interviews, the participation of the CIA in the coups against Hugo Chavez, as well as against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile. This is a must see to understand events in Venezuela today.

Washington and Tel Aviv lurching toward a war with Iran

In Iran, as elsewhere, US imperialism seeks to counter the decline of its economic domination through a turn to military aggression. While the European capitalist powers have joined in US military actions, particularly with the participation of the UK and France in the April 14 missile attack on Syria, their hopes of reaping a share of the booty from imperialist intervention can never be realized by serving as the tail of the American dog. Inevitably, they must turn to their own rearmament for a struggle of each against all for the redivision of the world. This process is already well under way.Bill Van Auken, 2 May 2018

Debate on US new nuclear weapons strategy

In this edition of The Debate, Press TV has conducted an interview with Marcus Papadopoulos, a publisher and an editor of Politics First from London, and Jonathan Fryer, a writer and lecturer from London, to discuss Washington’s plan to revamp its nuclear arsenal with smaller atomic weapons.

There is No FSA, There is Only Al-Qaeda

If indeed the US ever had a binary choice between supporting the Assad government, on the one hand, or extremists from al-Qaeda on the other, it is clear that in fact the US chose to support al-Qaeda, in the form of Nusra. US planners did so in an effort to topple the Assad government and thereby weaken its main regional rivals Iran and Hezbollah. Unsurprisingly, US intervention in Syria has had terrible consequences for the Syrian people, as the conflict between the rebels and the Syrian army has ruined much of the country. Such an outcome was easy to predict, and yet US planners funneled massive amounts of weapons into the country, typically by way of their Saudi and Qatari partners. Further, living under al-Qaeda rule is not something that Syrians, including Syrian Sunnis, welcome, and yet US planners supported the growth of al-Qaeda in Syria in order to accomplish its own foreign policy goals. It is often claimed that US planners seek to “stabilize” the Middle East. However, the US intervention in Syria serves as yet one more reminder that US policy in the region has sought to do just the opposite, at the cost of great human suffering for Syrians, as it did for Iraqis and Libyans before them.

From zero to hero: how Jeremy Corbyn resuscitated UK Labour against all odds

Jeremy Corbyn is now more popular than Ed Miliband and armed with confidence, direction and a bloody good programme, a miraculous turnaround in no time at all. Whatever happens, the idea that this leader could get thisfar with thisprogramme should shut up the neoliberal left and Blairites within Labour once and for all, shifting what is politically plausible in the UK to the left in the process.Jamie Mackay, 7 June 2017

The Corbyn surge was no fantasy. But what does it mean for the UK?

[The Labour campaign] was grounded in a real social vision that understood and proposed convincing solutions to the continuing legacy of the financial crash, the cruelty of state policies on the weakest that are specific to the UK. John Harris’s documentaries for the Guardian go to the real heart of this bleak reality and the vision for change. Look, for example, at the outdoor Corbyn rally in Gateshead on 5 June (11:16), which was ram-packed despite torrential January-like rain. Here you’ll see the drenched faces of young, old, white, black and a roughly 50/50 gender balance. When such a demographic and in such large numbers supports a manifesto like that put forth by Corbyn, the centre ground has well and truly shifted.

The young, on social media, but also in the streets and real life meetings, are bypassing the old forms of power and patronage and beginning to set a new political agenda. It was they who lead this fight, and they did so not out of radical chic pretentions but with discipline in order to contribute to building a more empathic society.Jamie Mackay, 9 June 2017

Israel and Palestine won’t get a two-state solution under Donald Trump

But they may get something better

The greatest guarantor of a society’s stability, prosperity, and sovereignty is its ability to provide all those under its rule with a genuine sense of dignity and equality.Instead of erasing national, cultural, or religious differences, Israel needs to find an intelligent way to forge a shared future. This future nation would likely need to be transformed into a binational state with significant degrees of autonomy for its diverse citizenry collectively, and robust rights for the individual.Haroon Moghul, December 21, 2016

Bush Military Official: The Empire's Ship is Sinking

Syria conundrum: Russian bear roars as the West slides

… the [S-400] deployment is not merely an act of tightening of Russian air defense. A closer look at it suggests its other significance. Certainly, Russia is not going to use these missiles against IS or any other terrorist organization. The only actors these missiles can potentially be used against are the States involved in Syria.It is, as such, a clear message to them. In fact, the very location of deployment tells the whole story plainly. From Khmeimim airbase - which is only 30 miles from Turkish border - S-400 radar covers Syria, western regions of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, nearly all of Israel and Jordan, Egypt’s northern Sinai, a large part of the eastern Mediterranean and Turkish airspace as far as the capital Ankara.Therefore, it cannot be gainsaid that this deployment has literally turned almost the whole of Syria into a “no fly zone” for US led coalition air strikes.Salman Rafi, 30 November 2015

Mehdi Hasan calls out EU leaders for turning their back on the thousands fleeing conflict

Refugees don’t need our tears. They need us to stop making them refugees

But equally important is responsibility. In all the rage about migration, one thing is never discussed: what we do to cause it. A report published this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveals that the World Bank displaced a staggering 3.4 million people in the last five years. By funding privatisations, land grabs and dams, by backing companies and governments accused of rape, murder and torture, and by putting $50bn into projects graded highest risk for “irreversible and unprecedented” social impacts, the World Bank has massively contributed to the flow of impoverished people across the globe. The single biggest thing we could do to stop migration is to abolish the development mafia: the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.A very close second is to stop bombing the Middle East. The west destroyed the infrastructure of Libya without any clue as to what would replace it. What has is a vacuum state run by warlords that is now the centre of Mediterranean people-smuggling. We’re right behind the Sisi regime in Egypt that is eradicating the Arab spring, cracking down on Muslims and privatising infrastructure at a rate of knots, all of which pushes huge numbers of people on to the boats. Our past work in Somalia, Syria and Iraq means those nationalities are top of the migrant list.Anders Lustgarten, 17 April 2015

“I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew.”

…In fact, our relation to those who are second-class citizens of Israel is inextricably bound up with our relation to those who live in immense distress at the bottom of the chain of the Zionist rescue operation. That oppressed population, which has lived under the occupation for close to 50 years, deprived of political and civil rights, on land that the “state of the Jews” considers its own, remains abandoned and ignored by international politics. I recognise today that my dream of an end to the occupation and the creation of a confederation between two republics, Israeli and Palestinian, was a chimera that underestimated the balance of forces between the two parties.

Increasingly it appears to be already too late; all seems already lost, and any serious approach to a political solution is deadlocked. Israel has grown used to this, and is unable to rid itself of its colonial domination over another people. The world outside, unfortunately, does not do what is needed either. Its remorse and bad conscience prevent it from convincing Israel to withdraw to the 1948 frontiers. Nor is Israel ready to annex the occupied territories officially, as it would then have to grant equal citizenship to the occupied population and, by that fact alone, transform itself into a binational state. It’s rather like the mythological serpent that swallowed too big a victim, but prefers to choke rather than to abandon it…